140 
A METEOROLITE. 
disintegration, and especially such as consists of 
conjoined small pieces, and the whole of the soil thus 
formed is of considerable value in general agricultural 
affairs ; the practice however of mixing lime with 
it, must not be understood to have any useful chem¬ 
ical effect, though in the first instance of this soil 
being brought into use for for farming purposes, a 
small admixture of that substance may be accounted 
necessary to supply that proportion required by all 
plants, but especially corn and vegetable crops. 
A little while ago, a flattened oblong stone was 
handed to me for examination, which had been dug 
out of clay with many fragments of limestone, the 
whole resting on a bed of limerock in the parish of 
Plymstock. From its great weight, its having a 
crust or envelope, and from bearing a strange im¬ 
pression in one part of it, I hoped I had found a 
meteorolite, and took it accordingly to be examined 
by Mr. Prideaux of Plymouth; though at first dis¬ 
posed to favor my idea, he at length, after due in¬ 
vestigation, decided on its being “ magnetic iron 
stone? and the only curious portions of its history 
were its having the impression or regular shaped 
pit, and its being found in such a situation far 
removed from anv bed of this kind. I named 
%/ 
to Mr. Prideaux at the same time, that near the 
spot where this stone was discovered, another, 
equally curious in appearance, had been taken up 
from a depth of several feet in the clay some few 
years ago, and upon giving him the following ac¬ 
count of it, he pronounced his opinion that it cer- 
certainly was a meteorolite. Unfortunately the 
description was afforded from memory, the specimen 
having been most provokingly lost; it was of the size 
of the head of a child a year old, and might have 
